We have had a number of females of various descriptions "sitting" for the past month or so and, as in every year, there is some anxiety as to whether all that effort will actually result in offspring. Often, when a female starts to sit, she simply disappears from view, finding some deeply hidden little nook of safety unknown to or unreachable by foxes and racoons. And, often, we have prematuraly mourned the loss of some well loved goose or duck, only to discover her leading a little parade of ducklings or goslings around the pond after a month's absence.
In recent years, however, the geese, especially, have taken to nesting right up against the house so as to thwart the attentions of foxes and racoons, who are leary of coming so close to human habitation. This last month, we have had a White Embden female nesting in our basement windowbox, a gray Toulouse sitting in the crook of our air conditioning unit, another White Embden below the kitchen porch, and our Whooping Swans taking up residence just across the driveway in front of the milk barn.
"Sitting" is far from a solitary occupation. First of all, most waterfowl mate for life and are intensely devoted, so the anxious father is never far away. As well, all the related aunties and uncles stand religious and insanely noisy guard around the expectant mother, warding off anything, including us, that violates their precincts with a great honking and hissing and flapping of wings.
This year our female Whooper sat for at least two months with her devoted husband in attendance, with, sadly, no results from her cache of three eggs. The White Embden beneath the kitchen porch is still sitting, but her nest of eggs has diminshed from a total of six a few weeks ago to just two now as something is eating them (racoon?) when she takes her occasional bath break.
However, the White Embden in the window box, two weeks ago, gave birth to two fine goslings, and, at about the same time, a pair of our mallards materialized from some cloistered spot in the woods with five handsome ducklings. But surely the most amazing birth on the farm must belong to our female Muscovy Duck, who, several years ago, nested eight feet up in the knothole of a tree near the pond. How she got herself and, eventually, her brood, in and out of that tiny space is still a mystery to me, but one morning we awoke to find her proudly leading a family of six tiny yellow offspring around the pond.
The gift of new life is one of the profound joys of the summer season, always balanced, of course, by the losses of winter, and year round fatalities pinned to snapping turtles, hawks, foxes, racoons, and the like. But that's the rhythm of the farm and, in fact, of all of nature: birth, loss, rebirth. To join in it is to reap both peace and understanding, which, as Martha would say, is definitely a good thing.
